Underwater Caustic Effects

I am trying to learn how to set up under water scenes. I followed a tutorial on Youtube for one which came out ok but not particularly noticeable in the scene. I found the "water reflection" gel in the special bryce folder so that was a plus. I tried another tut for underwater rays, ok but sparse and unconvincing. I have a couple of questions:

1. How can I make my own water reflections gels
2. Where can I find some?
3. Using the term "caustics" doesnt bring up much in a search, is there another term to use?
4. The underwater rays -how does the sky lab affect these? I am using a sky as the underwater colour. Sometimes the volume light rays show but usually they do not. The sky is cloudless with a high haze as suggested.

I'm going for a somewhat tropical sea. Not too murky but not crystal clear either.

I'm not very knowledgeable about the light lab, I've learned what a few of the buttons and sliders do, but I'd like to get on with my scene. I didnt use volumetric slab because I don't want to render for hours.

Comments

My fav way of doing it is to add a infinite plane across the top of the watrer volumetric slab, and use a caustic map with alpha, then shine a spotlight (or two or three) through it from some distance up, to provide a simulation of light beans through the water throwing a caustics shadow on the gound plane.

That is just my way. I look forward to seeing what other suggestions you get.

As with everything else in Bryce there are several approaches depending on your needs. If you are using Bryce 7 pro then you are in luck with the new lights. The Parallel Lights in Bryce 6.3 and earlier were not truly parallel at all. That is the reason for the new True Parallel Lights. Along with this improved accuracy, there is also much more control.

There are two considerations. The first being how to generate the caustic image map. The second being how to apply the map to the scene as a gel.

You can also use this map I can provide for free generated from Bryce procedurals in the DTE. Thank GOD for the videos and other items from David and Horo! Save this map to a location you can easily identify.

1. Create a True Parallel Light. By default these lights are aimed downward. Enter the Light Lab
2. Select Use Gel. Also, Click the Procedural Option. ( It is always best to choose the procedural option for this allows you the full options of the material lab)
3. In Slot A select the little P and enter the Picture Editor.
4. Click onto one of the available squares and a dialogue to load an image will pop up. Load the caustic image of your choice.
5. Make the Mapping Mode World Cubic. If you are using the free image supplied below then set the scaling to -5.6 along all three axis. Exit the Material Lab. You will be taken back to the Light Lab.
6. Along the left side of the Light Lab there is an area for the True Parallels controls. Enable the Infinite Width Option. Now exit the Light Lab.

thank you for your suggestions. I tried a volume slab and it wasn't too long to render, well, just for a sphere and a cube. I realized the spotlight with the gel didn't have to be above the 2nd water plane. I'm still experimenting with the slab idea. i

Sheesh! May I say it has been very difficult to get onto Daz in past week? Time between pages loading was 45 seconds each, if they loaded. Not my pc, other sites fast enough for me. I also got timed out I guess, trying to reply to your post. This will be shorter, LOL!

Hi everyone!
I just came back home for a few days from our rainy camping and discovered it's raining even more where we live...LOL...While waiting for a better weather I'm killing the time reading posts in new DAZ forums.
I just found this thread and may be my old caustic freebie can help someone. I made it long ago (2005) in mensioned above free "Caustics Generator". All textures inside my zip are absolutely free for both commercial & private use. No copyright here whatsoever. I just hope someone finds those caustics useful and they may save you time in making your own.

@Theresa Tyllo-thank you for the freebie caustics they are just what I was looking for

Ok, I'm posting my latest effort in trying to combine characters from DAZ into Bryce, getting the underwater caustics and light. I gave up the rays for now.

I realized that the diver hoses had become disconnected when I posed in DAZ-always check the other side, I remind myself. So I just cropped for now. Rotating each of the mermaid and diver in Bryce caused more separation of parts even though each was a "grouped object" That was an unepected glitch. I had to rely on the camera which I'm not so good at, to position, so the lighter part of the undersea was lost.

I used a combination of Chohole and Rashad's suggestions. It's still a little dark, but I got a great sand ripple shadow from the surface, and the watery reflection from the light gel preset. I had a problem with the mermaid, it would not fit through the "send to Bryce" pipe, so I exported as an object, but the eyes and hair got messed up, and the names of the meshes different. I had the hardboiled eggwhite eyes, so I deleted the corneas. I recolored the hair how I'd imagine brassy blond would look under water. The diver went through the pipe ok, well except for the hoses. Anyway this is an idea of what I am striving for. Credits: Water caustic/Rashad; Diver/Cybertenko; Mertail/LostRealms Thorned&Mada;/ Bra/MartianPrincess/MatchMaker; Hair/Hongyu; Corals/Transpond

@Teresa Thanks so much, snagged them, how do I tile a texture in Bryce tho?
@ IceScribe - lovely image, did you use DS4 cause I believe that the bridge is fixed in 4.5, and it probably explains why i had bits missing on a transfer i did yesterday from DS4P to Bryce, how does DS3A work wirh Bryce 7 I wonder.

Thank you for the compliment. I use Daz 3 which will send to Bryce 7 Pro if there is not something that jams it up. It is difficult to say what will jam up the pipe. It is not most hair, and the V and M 4 go through, but some clothing props or different skin textures and eyes than default V and M will jam up and cause Bryce to hang. I know it will hang if it stops at 25% and doesn't do anything for 15 seconds. After that happens, if I really like the pose etc, I'll export as obj from Daz and import into Bryce. But, that does not always keep the mats/textures. Don't know why.

I can't get the bridge from Daz 4 to work very often. I rarely use Daz4, because I end up having to import so many textures/mats into it, I may as well do that in Bryce, and I haven't bought all the stuff that makes old items work. I understand the controls better in Bryce than the shader system as I don't know anything about it in Poser or Daz. I look at the colour numbers like old timey non point/click programs had, and my eyes glaze over, LOL! I prefer the point/click in DAZ and then modify if desired in Bryce. The only thing is, Bryce is likely to crash if I modify a texture "too many times", say about 5 or more. I guess I could save, and clear the undo in Bryce, but I'm usually intent on the texture and fail to notice until the crash window comes up, LOL!

I don't usually send to Daz from Bryce because I like to render in Bryce. I made a textureless terrain to practice d-former tut and that worked ok.

Cheers IceScribe, yes I was mainly thinking of just doing posing etc in DS and then moving to Bryce for scenery and rendering, maybe I should install my copy of DS3A if the bridge to Bryce is more stable.

Depends on what you tile. Bryce can also tile pictures that are not prepared for tiling. Tiling is really a can of worms. There are so many options. One picture on an object - repeated or symmetric tileing, negative or positive size, scaled picture size, centered transform. I have 2 videos ready, over 45 minutes together, for the Mentoring DVD 2. It's amazing what Bryce has in store for such a simple thing as tiling.

... how do I tile a texture in Bryce tho?
Depends on what you tile. Bryce can also tile pictures that are not prepared for tiling. Tiling is really a can of worms. There are so many options. One picture on an object - repeated or symmetric tileing, negative or positive size, scaled picture size, centered transform. I have 2 videos ready, over 45 minutes together, for the Mentoring DVD 2. It's amazing what Bryce has in store for such a simple thing as tiling.

It was to do with these seamless tiles from Teresa

Those tiles are only 400x400 PNG, but they're seamless so you can fill new 800x800 canvas with them and get larger texture for your needs.

It has been fun with the bridge from Daz 3 to Bryce 7. Plenty of props arrive fully textured which saves tons of time. However, I forgot to mention that after several "send to Bryce" events, there is a different jam up, and the last transfer will hang, even if it was successful earlier. If I close everything down and restart my computer, it closes out the Daz program events that seems to be still running in the background. I have no idea how to make that stop otherwise--it does not show on the Task Manager window. (Windows 7)

I have sent at least 8 props individually with no problem to the same Bryce scene as long as I do it while it is still open at the same time as the first. Otherwise, a separate Bryce opens and then I must merge the second Bryce image with the first.

By choosing to send the character separately to open a new Bryce, it helps because there are less meshs to have to cruise up and down the mesh list to select and import materials. Also it is annoying to find out for example, "pants" are not a group but in the mesh list, and must be selected if I want to group the entire bits of the character so that it can be easily repositioned in the merged file. By deleting the ground plain, I select all groups and all meshes and group those. I recommend testing the group by rotating it, because recently I found that a badge did not group, so it was not highlighted and did not rotate. I undid the rotation and returned the grouped character to original working position, merged it with the props scene, then went back and merged the badge. Seems to have worked, whew!

Then I merge the grouped character with the scene/props Bryce scene. The important thing is to not move anything until the final Bryce workspace is merged. Or you could write down all the important co-ordinates, bleh! But this is my workaround system, there may be others that are more efficient.

Hi Ian,
As Horo wrote about Bryce tiling: "Tiling is really a can of worms. There are so many options."
That's why I prefere to use already tiled 2D images of my choice instead of dudling with Bryce tiling. I find it more convinient and easier for me. I have only Bryce6.1 on my puter.

To tile my 400x400 caustics and get bigger texture you simply use your 2D program of choice (Gimp,Psp,PS). I always use my PhotoImpact10 to do 2D work.

== How you can tile already seamles images to a bigger textures in 2D program==
-open new empty canvas (800x800) in your 2D proggy
-open my small 400x400 caustic pic and copy it
-fill your new empty image with my caustic that you just copied, and you'll get seamless 800x800 texture of my caustic
-Now you can use that larger caustic image in Bryce for underwater effect, as Rashad explain earlier in the thread.
I hope it helps you.
-Teresa :coolsmile: